Exclusive NXTGEN on new single Sucka 4 Love and songwriting

NXTGEN have had a crazy old year since appearing on The Voice, it shows no sign of slowing down as they release their latest single Sucka 4 Love.

The band which includes Cian, Joel and Sonny have been busy releasing single after single and building up their musical back catalogue.

When we caught up with them recently they were on a brief break from their busy schedule, which at the precise moment we called them involved them being on a 2 day writing camp in Hartlepool.

“It’s very nice, freezing though we are right on the coast.”

Needless to say one of the first things we wanted to know is what actually happens during a songwriting camp as we always pictured some sort of Camp Rock set up….

Joel tells us ” We are working with two girls as well one that’s a producer so it always helps to have someone whose good on a computer and can make a beat as we like to have beat there first and that sort of like triggers more ideas for us. Then we think back to experiences that we’ve been through that made us feel a certain way, because it’s always better writing about stuff you’ve experienced rather than lying as then it’s not real. We just like to bounce off each other.”

“Love is the easiest thing to write about as that’s what touches you the most.”

One of the biggest bonding experiences for them as a band is the fact they all admit they cannot dance.

“We actually have a song out about it “I Don’t Know How To Dance”, laughs Sonny. “How that one came about was pretty cool actually, we were in the studio with Will [the bands Voice mentor and now, friend and collaborator WILL.I.AM]whose like you guys are terrible dancers, you can’t dance, you should embrace that and write a song about it, so we did.”

Talk turns to their latest single released today, Sucka 4 Love

“We wrote the new song Sucka 4 Love in London a couple of months ago” says Cian, ” This one is more hip-hop inspired, it’s a got very distinctive beat in the chorus that will catch on very quickly.

“When started writing about this we were actually talking about who influenced us and who we liked as artists. Joel said Justin Bieber, Cian said Michael Jackson, and I like 2Pac”, Sonny explains “And Will actually likes old hip-hop so we were talking about songs like that and one of my favourite songs by him is Do For Love, in that song there is a lyric “I’m a sucker for love”, we were chanting and singing this lyric over a beat that Will already had and it really caught on. It’s quite happy in a way.”